Leap of Faith...

Remember in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" when Indiana had to just step out into nothing? I remember the first time I saw that on the big screen. I was still deep into my fear of heights (which I have since come a long way with) and just watching him do that made my skin crawl and my hands sweat. He knew what he had to do, he knew that something good was going to happen, he knew that it was the right thing to do...but that didn't make it easy on him.

Imagine that moment just after he made the decision to actually do it, he was falling and there was no looking back. That instant when he was too far to step back and not yet on solid ground.

I know God has a plan for me. I know that he wants to use me for his service and that my life is a constant build up to better things in his service. Bad things happen, but He uses them to steel me into a stronger instrument for His use. Good things happen and they come from Him to charge my batteries and remind me of how awesome He is.

Either way, I want to follow him, wherever it takes me.

Just saying that sends chills up my spine...makes my skin crawl and my hands sweat. I have never had this feeling before. Following God has always been, in a word...safe. It's been the one thing that brought normalcy into my life, the thing that made me...stable. Now, things just feel different...and I have never felt more alive.

Let me see, has this happened before? I know that there were some fishermen that were going about their lives as good, God-loving men that probably never imagined that their lives were about to take a dramatic change in course. They were mere men, simple men, not spiritual giants...far from it, but God had a plan for them. I can only imagine that he had been secretly preparing them for this all their lives. He guided them to be who they were and put them in the right place at the right time.

When Indiana touched the solid ground of the invisible bridge his heart must have skipped a beat. My foot is free falling, I'm not looking back and I can't wait to make this step.

I know God is there and I have never felt more alive.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Jeremiah 29:11

"Rolling Boil"

Have you ever watched a pot of water boil? If you are going to, leave it for a little bit until it starts because it never will while you are watching.

What looks like a swirling bowl of chaos is really a collection of water molecules just doing what comes naturally. The surface of the boiling pot is a center of activity, constantly moving and in a state of constant change. If you stare at it long enough, you might notice that it looks completely different from one moment to the next.

The reason it keeps changing is a continuing stream of new molecules reaching the point at which they turn into gas and then coming to the surface. It's interesting that they don't all turn into gas at the same time (that would be called an explosion, the opposite of that would be stagnation). The chaos below turns into a fluid movement on the surface.

The surface is not where all of the work is done, but it is where the work is exposed. Millions of tiny molecules turning heating up and then rising to the surface to cause a consistent bubbling effect.

This occurred to me while I was sitting in the auditorium at church Sunday waiting for the service to start. Where I am now, each service seems so different, yet they all have an energy to them. One of the reasons that this energy is so consistent is that it's just the surface of work that is constantly re-energizing itself. If there was only one group that did everything, then you would see ebb and flow, up and down. Sometimes the energy level would be high when some effort was coming to it's fruition, other times the energy level would be low because they were regrouping. You see...One small set of people cannot keep on feeding the energy of an entire congregation without rejuvenation.

Another interesting aspect of this is that if you like something that you are experiencing or participating in now then don't get to attached to it because it will change, on the other hand if you are not crazy about it then it don't sweat it because it too will pass. Either way you look at it, the energy level is almost always high and the passion is strong. Also, we get to constantly push ourselves to try new things, open our minds and let God take us places that we didn't know about.

Just like a rolling boil on the stove, it just keeps coming. Pretty cool.

"Sometimes a Rose is just a Rose"

Sometimes a Rose is just a Rose.

So, I'm listening to Relient K, my son loves them and I'm just starting to experience them. I run across this song called "I'm Lion-O" and I instantly love it. It has great energy, a really cool hook and awesome harmonies.

Now Relient K is some sort of Christian Rock group so I immediately think "what a great song, maybe it will give me some inspiration for a devotional or lesson". OK, it talks about a Lion, so the first thing I think about is David and I go from there. My mind takes off with it and I start thinking of themes...however. What is this part about the "Thundercats"? I have never heard about such a thing in the Bible. I start to do some research. I "Google" the song and find the answer very quickly.

This song is about a cartoon called the Thundercats (I thought it sounded familiar) and it is just for fun. One of the Thundercats is "Lion-O". It's that simple. Pretty cool...I still can't stop listening to it.

Sometimes a Rose is just a Rose...er...a cat is just a cat.

"Big Bang"...Revisited

Don't look in my previous posts for another "Big Bang" entry; there isn't one. When I was in college (a Christian College) I wrote a term paper for a Christian Evidences class about the "Big Bang Theory".

My theory about the "Big Bang Theory" was that it is a plausible, human description of what God did to create this thing we call the universe. Although I received a decent grade because of the work I had done, my teacher had some things to say about my "theory". I don't remember what the teacher said, but he was not convinced. Either was my father-in-law when I shared it with him.

Now, years later (OK, many years later) on reflection, I had it right, even though I'm sure that I would state the case differently now.

Think about it, you have a bunch of scientific types observing all things that are observable in the universe and trying to figure out how it all happened. They choose to only believe what they can see, hear, taste, touch or measure. What other conclusion can they come up with? The evidence is right in front of their faces and they need not look any further.

As a Christian it's obvious to me and I need not look any further than

Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

However, my feeble, human mind cannot comprehend how God can do that so I have to picture something. What the scientists miss is that MAYBE what God did may look like a "Big Bang", but he did it just the same and he spoke the universe into existence.

Maybe that's why it's still just a theory...